Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000' and 'Begriffsschrift'

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2 ideas

19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 4. Compositionality
Frege's account was top-down and decompositional, not bottom-up and compositional [Frege, by Potter]
     Full Idea: Frege's account was top-down, not bottom-up: he aimed to decompose and discern function-argument structure in already existing sentences, not to explain how those sentences acquired their meanings in the first place.
     From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 03 'Func'
     A reaction: This goes with the holistic account of meaning, which leads to Quine's gavagai and Kuhn's obfuscation of science. I recommend compositionality for everthing.
19. Language / D. Propositions / 1. Propositions
A proposition is what can be asserted or denied on its own [Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: A proposition is what can be asserted or denied on its own, for example, 'It is day' or 'Dion is walking'.
     From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.65
     A reaction: Note the phrase 'on its own'. If you say 'it is day and Dion is walking', that can't be denied on its own, because first the two halves must each be evaluated, so presumably that doesn't count as a stoic proposition.